Wow. Will be quite some work if I want to be able to vote fairly. I am impressed overall, by the way.
Artist Task:
I'm not an expert here and will not try to hide that. I think I can agree with everything that vrt said, except that I also like the 'Wolf' art. So I had to decide between Wolf, Tornado, Living Weapon and Warthog.
While I really like the Wolf as a picture, I think it's less suited as an actual card art - there's so much going on, and no real center.
I love the Warthog, but it does somehow look like it simply misses something. This might have been my favourite art with a bit of additional work.
I will thus choose Living Weapon, as it is great, and Tornado, which is slightly boring in itself, but very well executed (which is better for a card art than the other way around).
Once again, only my personal opinion, I really don't know much about drawing.
Card Designer Task:
The Inevitable: The basic concept is interesting, but I see a problem there:
If it is supposed to be balanced, it can't be a free win against decks without PC.
If it is thus balanced against decks without PC, it is UP against any deck with PC for the following reason:
The PC doesn't even have to be played in most games and can be saved for other cards, because you will often be outrushed before the counter reaches 0. (See first sentence) In combination with the fact that you can't EA it (which is probably a good idea), it will be very hard to actually implement this card in a competitive deck.
Conquest: I think I love this. The basic concept is very creative.
However, the card stacks and EA is in-element, which makes one doubt its balance. It only takes over empty slots, but I don't think that's enough of a drawback.
Example: You play 2 or 3 EA'd Conquests, otherwise only stallish cards. Opponent gets out 6 creatures until all his other slots are taken over. Now you CC (RT even works too, hello EA'd Eternity?) one or a few creatures - all the now empty slots are instantly taken over when you end your turn, your opponent has no chance of playing new creatures. Repeat. Win.
Then again, the additional quanta & card slots needed for this combo might make it impossible to outstall a rush long enough.
It's more or less a guaranteed loss against untargetable creatures, but a free win against 95% of all stalls.
Aside from this rock-paper-scissor'ish part, I like this card.
Soul Eater: This is highly subjective, but I think this is just too complicated to fit in this game. As those ideas almost never make it into the game anyway, one could argue that it is more about the designing itself... but that's not my opinion, and as I may vote subjectively, this doesn't get on my shortlist.
This is definetly the most subjective decision I made while trying to judge these cards and can be seen in a different way.
Pandemic Worm: Interesting, but slightly too strong. A few Worms, Plate Armors, Aflatoxins, drawing power. Basically an OTK - and you only need 1 Pandemic Worm + 4 Aflatoxins + 2 Plate Armors (unupped, even). So only 7 cards for a guaranteed OTK that isn't even weak against +max HP. You'd need 40 Death Quantum, which is probably the biggest drawback, but that's still doable.
/e: You don't even need any Plate Armor when you have drawing power. Thanks to Paddoo for pointing it out to me.
Commune with Nature: Way op. Life mark, 6 Nova, 6 Photon, 6 Immo, 4 this, few SoB's & Precogs, few EA's, free win. Not to speak of its synergy with Life Marks (the card).
Glory of Atlantis: The wording is a bit strange, I would have prefered something like 'Enters game with 3 marks. Remove 1 mark ateoyt if you control >4 underwater creatures. Win if 0 marks.'
Otherwise, I really like this though. Actually in-element, synergy with an UP card. I also don't see an op abuse with it, although it might just be UP. It is also well executed, way better than, for example, a cost of 15 with an instant win effect.
So, These are my thoughts. I'm well aware of the fact that it's not only about balance. (For some people, it's probably not about balance at all) But if you try to balance cards, you often see that some ideas are impossible to include in the game, which is just one reason why I think it can't be ignored.
Especially as I feel like the balance of almost every card is a bit off in one or the other way (very very hard/impossible not to be though, in this challenge), I will mainly, albeit not only, judge based on the creativity of the basic concept.
The Inevitable, Conquest and Glory of Atlantis are the ones I like most. I will vote for Glory of Atlantis and Conquest.
Boss Task:
I wasn't a fan of the task itself, and I'm none of most submissions.
If I want to read the same politically correct crap over and over again, I visit my dentist and read the women's magazines in the waiting room.
I felt like Team Surf Ninja's submission is, albeit going in the same direction mentioned above, the most interesting one, as it focusses on the aspect of the (possible) non-universality of ethics, which is a difficult topic often kept under wraps. So, I voted (only) for Team Surf Ninja's submission.
Deckbuilder Task:
Darkness: Despite its simplicity quite accurate. Still, it obviously lacks thought and effort.
Entropony Cowboys: Much thought was put into this deck, it seems. I personally would have prefered a more metaphorical approach though.
The Crusaderps: Quite good.
Fire: A bit too simple in my humble opinion. I do like the explanation on how it was created though, and the fact that it was actually tested.
Expensive Clocks: Some cool approaches, for example the BW ('Fallen allies and opponents strengthen you').
Surf Ninjas: Interesting. I like the idea of that order! I think this could have been improved though, chosing the strongest card from the respective elements is a bit blunt Then again, it's hard to make it work anyway...
All in all, this one is quite tough for me. There is only one that's significantly worse than the others, and none that strikes me as an obvious winner... Will have to think a bit about this, or maybe not vote at all.
[rest to be edited]
Poll
